Terminal Distance
by Shade Embry
Summary: Day 3, 5-6 P.M. ‘So we crossed the line and can’t turn back’Cause we thought we had foreverAnd a day we never thought would end this way…’ – Blessid Union of Souls


Terminal Distance

Summary: Day 3, 5-6 P.M. 'So we crossed the line and can't turn back/'Cause we thought we had forever/And a day we never thought would end this way…' – Blessid Union of Souls

Spoilers: Day 3, 5-6 P.M.

Standard disclaimers apply.

Original Character Bios: Liz Rycoff, after surviving the first two days, no longer works at CTU. Instead, she took over Mason's position after he died, in order to protect CTU from another annoying bureaucratic panic, but she's not really qualified. Still, she soldiers on. Liz was close friends with Mason, but now all she really has left is Jack. The two of them started a relationship about a year after Day 2, but it's kind of going slowly. She also had a failed non-relationship of sorts with Tony between Day 1 and Day 2, and Tony's intervention made Liz realize that in trying to save everyone, she ended up getting lost.

  
David Taylor is Liz's assistant, ex-field ops himself. Smart, full of sardonic humor, and generally a stand-up guy, he has been there for her even when she's never asked. He has taken the term literally, making it his job to know everything about her, to be everything she needs him to be, and to stay with her like a loyal retriever. Having worked with her for three years now, he has become a friend of hers especially as she goes through days without Jack around to help her.

Dedication: Kiefer Sutherland, the man who can make me weep in any Jack/Kim Bauer exchange ever. I swear, they could order a pizza and I'd be holding my couch pillow looking for a Kleenex box. Good man.

Recommended Listening: "Way We Were Before" by Blessid Union of Souls (Jack and Liz's theme; quoted herein).

_5:55 P.M._

Jack Bauer glanced out the doors of the prison, seeing the emergency vehicles and all the guards and realizing that breaking out his enemy would be harder than he thought it would be. He'd have to go through a veritable gauntlet, never mind that he'd already been forced to violate the trust of his daughter and the woman he loved –

He stopped for a second. Liz and David had been following him in their car from the mall, and he had seen them both, he thought, behind Chase when Chase had raided the room in which he and Salazar had been held. Were they still here somewhere? Were they out there among the waiting crowd? She would never turn sides on him, but still, he didn't want her to see what he was about to do. If she was somewhere else, she could lie and claim she had no idea he would ever do this. He wanted it that way, didn't want to drag her down, no matter how much she wanted to go down. Sometimes she was blind like that, but he knew where it came from, a place he wished he still had inside of himself.

"Jack."

His head snapped around, and there she was, looking harried and worn with the Kevlar vest impeding her normally fluid motion, David behind her. Both of them looked like they'd been through hell, battered despite still being covered in the blood of a friend who'd fallen – was it an hour ago already? It seemed so much shorter. Things seemed so much more liable to slip away.

"And they say the love of a good woman is hard to find," Salazar taunted him.

"Shut up if you want to get out of here alive," Jack warned him. "Liz, you shouldn't be here."

"Technically I shouldn't have been anywhere today, but I'm here, Jack. You should know better. You should know I wouldn't leave." She approached him, pausing as if she wanted to reach out to him, but holding back. David, too, hesitated, like he knew it was wrong place, wrong time, and nothing they did would make it any better. How right he was.

"Liz, you don't know what you're getting into."

Silence fell over them as she stared at him, almost taken aback. As if to say that she had shown up and betrayed Chase's trust, and now he would dare to tell her she didn't know what it was like? Standing there, with all those friends turned enemies on the other side of the doors, no one said anything for a moment, not even Salazar in his arrogance. Then Liz's voice split that silence as she started forward, always first in and last out. "I'm going with you."

"Liz, no." He caught her wrist in his hand, stopping her from opening the door. "When I do this, I become a fugitive. I will lose everything. That's not meant for you."

"Yeah, but you are." She stared at him. "Jack, you're not going to leave me again."

"Liz, I have to." Desperation was starting to seep into his voice. "No one else can do this."

"This is different, Jack. Different than last year, different even then that first time you left me." She met his gaze and held it. "This time I know you're not coming back."

He looked truly crushed somewhere deep inside. "When I get done with this, I promise you, I will find you somehow," he said quickly. "This is not forever, Liz. This is not goodbye. When this is over, we're going to be together. But right now, I have to do this alone, and you have to trust me." Jack reached over and gently pried her hand from the door. 

They held one long last look. It would never be as simple as he was making it sound. She wouldn't be able to just take Kim and disappear to meet him somewhere. But they lied to themselves because they had to and because they wanted to, and because they honestly did believe in what they said. They had to, or what else did they have to draw upon in the face of all this?

"David, take care of her for me," he said to the other man, his eyes never leaving Liz's.

"Yes, sir," David said simply, knowing it wasn't his moment to intrude. This was their moment, their last moment, and it belonged to them alone, even as the future was burning around the both of them. After all they had done, no one could deny them this.

Jack, still holding Liz's hand, drew her close for a small moment, and leaned in and kissed her. Knowing it might be the last time he ever had the chance, the passion, the faith, the fire of the decade they'd spent together singing in their souls, he almost didn't want to let go. The kiss was tender, gentle, and full of the love he felt for her, the kind of feeling he had not felt in so long, that had taken so long to realize. It was only seconds in a lifetime, but it meant everything, and it broke his heart to pull away from her, throw open the doors of the prison, face down Chase, advance on that helicopter and leave her standing there again. He thanked God that she couldn't see the tears forming behind his eyes as the distance once again came between them.

Liz stepped back after a moment, back into David's reassuring grasp on her shoulder. She turned and looked at him for a moment, as if she had forgotten who he was, forgotten everything about herself. The sympathy in his eyes was infinite, as much as he could possibly give, as much as he could ever understand this idea of two people brought together by fate and held together by passion. Neither of them said anything, for there weren't words for this. After those few seconds, acting like nothing was wrong, though everything was, she checked to make sure Chase's attention was diverted, then turned and ran for the Altima, and started all over again, thinking of words she had told Jack: their work was not yet done.

"You going to be okay?" David asked her needlessly as he backed the vehicle out of the Downey parking lot, fighting with the vest until he got it off and tossed it in the back seat where hers was already thrown off and laying haphazardly.

"No," she told him, trying to clean up in the compact mirror. "But it doesn't matter."

He didn't ask her any more questions, just drove, knowing what she was thinking of: a decade's worth of struggle, a decade's worth of memories, a decade's worth of things she would never take back. Without Jack Bauer, she would utterly be lost, and that she was well aware of. It had been too long for any other alternative. Long enough that he could see her wiping tears from her eyes when she didn't think he was looking. Jack meant that much. He meant everything.

_-When we started it was years ago_

_We tried so hard to find our souls_

_And lose the innocence that won't let go-_

The roar of the helicopter was a blessing in one sense for Jack, in that it helped him drown out all the things he was feeling. Liz never should have had to be there, have had to fight her way through that riot for him, have had to watch him leave her again. Yet at the same time, he knew he should have expected it from her. As much as he tried to protect her, she didn't want to be protected. That wasn't the person she was. She was the one who solved her own problems by helping the problems of other people. This time, though, he had to wonder if she could save him, though she would no doubt try.

"Now you are an even bigger enemy to your country than I am," Salazar interrupted his thoughts.

Jack shot Salazar a death glare. Yes, he had laid everything on the line, given it all up to do this. That was the right thing to do. Truth be told, he lived to do the right thing, no matter how high the cost. After losing Teri, after two horrible days over four and a half years, he had really stopped caring about what happened to him as long as everyone else was okay. Delivering Salazar would save hundreds of thousands of lives – the ends would justify the actions he was taking. But then he realized he was lying to himself: he did care what happened to his own life, because now he had a concrete reason to. Liz made him feel like his life was still worth living, despite it all, and he couldn't just let that feeling go, not without paying a heavy price like the sick feeling that hit him that second.

He kept his eyes focused on the sky, needing to be distracted if he were to stay alive, at least in the physical sense. It was time to say goodbye, no matter how much he hated it.

_-So we crossed the line and can't turn back_

Happy endings never last 

_'Cause there's always more to stories never told-_

"We're gonna need to…"

David glanced at Liz, surprised to hear her speak as they hit a red light down the street. He had figured her to stay silent, to go into another of her quiet moods. "Going to need to what?" he prompted her gently.

"We're going to need to," she swallowed, trying again, "get back to CTU. Not Division. Because obviously they already know about this, it'll be hell down there."

He nodded. "What do you want to do?"

"The only thing I'm good at," she said. "If we make it there before Chappelle … maybe we can try and save something of Jack's career before they tear it all apart."

David exhaled, "Michelle's probably already started…"

"…I know." He saw Liz's gaze harden at the edges in the rear view mirror. "But now she'll have to go through me."

Her loyal assistant and close friend knew the rest of the sentence: it was what she had left to do. He didn't question her, just drove faster. Anything he could do, he would. She'd taught him that. And she had been taught that by someone else that even then he could feel looking over his shoulder.

_-Is this what I've been waiting for_

_A life for someone else_

_To polish all my faded dreams and put them on the shelf-_

"If you want to blame me, Liz, blame me," he'd told her two years before. "You wouldn't be the first, or the last."

She'd held his gaze, unshaken. "I don't blame you anymore, Jack, if I ever did. Tony told me something too. He told me that I spent too much time worrying about everyone else and I'd forgotten about myself. I feel now like you felt two and a half years ago … that the wall is coming down … and I can't blame you if I'm in the same place you used to be."

"Liz, it'll be okay," he'd insisted. "I promise you that. After tonight, it'll be better than this."

But he'd lied, hadn't he? Jack stifled a broken breath, hiding it with a mask of apathy. He had lied to her, hadn't he, when he'd said it would be better? Maybe it had been, at first. It had certainly been something beautiful to hold her in his arms, to tell her all the things he wished he'd been able to tell Teri but never could because Teri hadn't been on the inside of all those cruel operations, to wake up next to her in the morning and watch her nearly catatonic in her sleep. Those were some of the best moments of his life, second only to those memories made with Teri and Kim. He knew he'd always love Teri, but he also knew that he loved this woman he'd asked to give up everything for the greater good. And she'd done it, bless her beautiful heart, she had done it without blinking an eyelash. She deserved better than promises he had just ended up breaking.

He wondered then if it would ever be better than this, or if this would be all it would come to, someday. Broken promises, broken hearts, and lives being picked up off the floor, as he showed them the door once again. It couldn't end like this, could it? That would be too much. More than he could bear.

_-Is this what I've been dreaming of_

_'Cause I'm needing so much more_

_I'm just trying to get back where we were before-_

Elisabeth Rycoff was in love with this man whom she'd sent off on this dangerous task that threatened to drag him under, and she couldn't think of what might be happening to him. Or more than likely, she couldn't stop thinking of the moment she had left him. They hadn't even said goodbye when he'd walked out on her years before. She knew well the moment she'd said goodbye, at least temporarily, knowing it could be forever, to Jack Bauer.

They had started off with the professional lies at first, the asking and answering of questions, but of course it wouldn't last, not with the two of them and the way they felt about each other. They eventually had to come apart.

"I will do everything in my power to get back to you as soon as I can, you know that," Jack said, looking down into her eyes. "I'm not leaving you. I promise you. But I have to do this."

"I know you do," she said, taking a long deep breath. "And I know what I've got to do. But I'm afraid for you, Jack. Afraid for us. This could really hurt you…"

"It's a risk I have to take. We want this guy, and somebody has to take him down. I know I can do it. You just have to trust me."

"I do trust you. I just don't want to lose you, not after all this time." She let out a humorless chuckle, resting her head against his chest. "Look at me. I'm getting screwed up in the head and you haven't even left yet."

He chuckled, running his fingers through her hair. "Liz, look at me for a second." She did. He waited just the right second. "You've always been screwed up in the head."

She laughed, honestly laughed, a sound of amusement and sardonic mirth. "You're one to talk," she said, but then the humor died, replaced by a bitter sobriety. "I'm going to be selfish here. I'm not saying this for Kim or Chase or anyone else. I'm saying this for me. You have to come back, because I need you back with me."

He kissed her gently then. "I'm going to come back," he told her. "After all the things we've done … this is just the next thing." He had said that, and she had doubted him, and the most painful feeling in the world was right now, as she sat in the car, nails digging into her hands, knowing her doubt had been right.

_-We'd shine so hard for everyone_

_'Cause we thought we had forever and_

_A day we never thought would end this way-_

The two Division officers made it to CTU, and from the moment she stepped into the building, Liz broke into a dead run. It was all David could do to follow her, but this was as close as she had to home, and she wasn't about to worry about appearances. Not when she was covered in a friend's blood and the man she loved had sacrificed himself yet again on the altar of things greater than they could ever understood. He followed her as she pushed through security, down the hall, and through the double doors in what seemed like one fluid motion, ignoring all the sudden glances she received from people she'd once worked with.

Liz made eye contact with Michelle Dessler first. They'd phoned Michelle from the mall, told her about Tony, and the news had not been taken well, understandably. However, it was an awkward situation now, as Michelle was also spearheading whatever inquiry into Jack's life was going on at CTU. Rather than say anything, the two women just exchanged a curt nod. They didn't mean to be on other sides of the line this time, they just were.

Kim Bauer spun in her chair when she heard the commotion, still trying to keep tears out of her eyes, and stood abruptly when she realized who it was that had started all the noise. With the years of friendship not just between Liz and her father but also between Liz and herself, Kim had been used to the other woman's face, and had been the one to tell Liz it was finally all right to lay her late mother's ghost to rest. Kim had done a lot to push Liz out of the past, and now when she needed someone, Liz was ready to repay the favor. Seeing the stunned look in Kim's red-rimmed eyes, she knew the sky was already falling on the both of them. 

"What happened?" Kim asked as Liz approached, taking her into her arms. "He had to do it," was all Liz said, still trying to figure out how to explain this all to Jack's daughter. "It was the only way … but he knows what he gave up." The words were flat, horribly incomplete, but processing the situation was still too hard, there was still too much shock involved. "I'm going to be here," Liz continued, hoping it would be good enough for Kim even as the two of them pulled apart, but knowing in her heart that it was just more empty words, as all the spaces in between moments like the one she'd just departed all seemed to be made of emptiness.

With that, she turned on her heel, to David waiting with the sympathetic eyes, to Michelle standing there pensive and nervewracked, to the people who'd known her and what she would do and those who regarded her as a stranger about to ask them for more than they could give. "All right. As ranking officer, I'm taking control of this investigation until someone tells me otherwise." It was a gutsy move, slighting an old friend, potentially risking being reamed for subverting authority on something about which she had an unquestionable bias, throwing things into disarray. For Jack, it was the least she could do.

_-With a million mornings left to come_

_We never cared for losing one_

_But it's half past my forever_

_And I need someone to hold my hand-_

The words she said came back to him: "You look at a relationship in terms of, you're either going to get married and die of old age together, or you're not." Truth be told he had never thought that far ahead. All the things that had happened over the last four years had stripped him of a great deal of foresight. He did not yet think of remarrying, of starting an entirely new existence. Somehow, that seemed something behind him, that he had no right to have again. Yet he had to think about it now. Was it better this way, really, if all he was ever going to do to Liz was leave her, drag her into challenge after challenge? Didn't she deserve a marriage and a family if she wanted one? Was she waiting on him to give what he never could? It made his head hurt just considering that he might be holding her back.

What was it that this came to, truly? Over the last two years their lives had been so complicated, their relationship further still. For every moment where he held her or they spoke without a quiet fear of the next crisis, there was another where they were preparing for something that never came, or worrying about problems they left unspoken. Yet for all of that, Liz was the one woman who was his anchor, who reminded him that despite all that had happened, he was still the same person. She was the common thread in the whole of his life and he couldn't bear to let that go, or he might find himself abruptly lost in the going.

Jack watched the skyline, refusing to show this kind of weakness in front of Ramon Salazar. But it was the weakness in him that made him different from Salazar, that much he was certain of.

_-And you're just what I've been waiting for_

_To come and take me in_

_To grab a hold and take control and make me whole again-_

Liz stepped away from Kim for a moment, motioning to David with one hand, and the two of them walked over to Michelle. The District Director did empathize with her friend – both of them were deeply in love with their respective significant others, and both of those men had taken harsh blows this day – but she knew Michelle would, if she hadn't already, order an uncovering of Jack's life, and Liz simply could not permit it. There wouldn't be much small talk in this exchange as the three of them huddled near Michelle's desk.

"What have you done?" Liz asked, matter-of-factly. 

Michelle, to her credit, never wavered. "We've put out an APB and called in military air command. They're mobilizing troops as we speak. I also had to have Chloe search Jack's office." 

Liz nodded. "What did you find?" 

The other woman hesitated. Her eyes slid over to David, indicating that she wasn't sure if this was something Liz wanted anyone else to know. Picking up on this, Liz just gave a slight, small nod. David could be trusted with anything, and this wasn't the time to bench him because of something that might be touchy. Michelle swallowed. "We found heroin. He's been using." David's eyes widened slightly, and he glanced at Liz protectively, but she wasn't looking at him. She didn't miss a beat. "Who knows about this?" 

"Chloe, Petrovsky from the drug unit, and Chloe told me she told Kim."

"Jesus, Michelle." Liz's response was stronger than intended, causing both David and Michelle to retreat slightly. "That's how you broke the news to his daughter? Let somebody with very little restraint handle it? No wonder why she was broken up." She exhaled, knowing there was nothing she could do about Kim's feelings now. "We're going to seal everything we brought out of Jack's office, lock it in cold storage. In fact, nobody goes into his office from now on without my express permission. I want an open line to air command and updates every ten minutes. Shooting that plane down is our last resort."

"We're just going to lock everything down and see what happens?" Michelle's question wasn't so much a challenge as a reminder that they were getting into territory maybe they shouldn't be getting into. Liz knew that, and she knew that this was her job but also so much more than that, both in terms of this was what she was, and this was the man she loved. She nodded, turning to walk away. "That's exactly what we're going to do. Like somebody once said, this isn't over yet."

Neither the meaning nor the reference was lost on Michelle.

_-And if you need my everything_

_You can take it all and more_

_Just help me to get back where we were before-_

_-I've grown numb to some things_

_Hunger for the one thing_

_That takes me back to where it all began-_

As CTU personnel scrambled to put new orders in play, their new superior officer turned and walked off the operational floor. Surprised by the move – everything he knew about her screamed that she would be in the thick of it all – David turned on his heel and quickly went after her, cornering her underneath the stairs to find her with that same odd distant look in her eyes.

"Hey," he said gently. "You scare me when you disappear. What's going on?"

Liz chuckled humorlessly. "David, you know what's going on."

"Yeah, but I can't read your mind, I don't know what's going on there." He put his hands lightly on her shoulders, holding a long look into her eyes and making sure he spoke with a deliberate conviction. "I know it's screwed up out there right now but we're going to do everything we can to set things right. We're going to fight till the very last second, and I wouldn't expect anything less from you."

"What if it's not good enough?"

"Don't even go there." He sucked in a breath, trying to make it all make sense for her again, knowing he couldn't do that now. "Remember when we talked about going all the way? This is going all the way."

She smiled gamely, "You're really something, David."

"No, I'm not. I just follow your lead." He shook his head. "You want some time alone?"

"Yeah, that'd be nice, thanks."

"Okay. Find me when you're done." David squeezed her shoulders reassuringly before he turned and walked back toward the heart of the action. Liz watched him go for a second, then closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. She didn't know David had stopped just short of the bullpen so he could watch her and make sure that she was okay. She liked David, but he wasn't Jack, even if he was the one watching over her now. When she closed her eyes as she did then, she could see Jack waiting for her to make the leap.

_-I know we've grown apart_

_But every now and then_

_I just close my eyes and here we are again-_

Mason had told him that being a hero meant going back to ground and being there for his daughter and for his best friend. If Mason could see him now, Jack ruminated, he would have chewed him out with the same argument, and he wouldn't have any defense at all, because the late District Director was absolutely right. He was blind to the cost as long as the cause was right, even if this time the cost was the two women in his life who were most dear to him.

The memory that came to his mind then was a bittersweet one indeed, from that first day four and a half years ago, when they had just been loyal friends and his life had still looked normal, neither of them having any perception of how much they would be thrown by events only hours down the line.

"How long have we been together?" he'd asked her after she'd once again gone to the mat with Mason to pull him out of the fire following Elizabeth Nash's little contretemps.  
  
"Three years, unless you want months, weeks, days or minutes."  
  
"Don't need them. How many times have you done this for me?"  
  
"I didn't count those."  
  
"Guess."  
  
"Maybe half a dozen. Maybe more."  
  
"Don't you think that's too much?"  
  
"Jack, for you, nothing is ever too much."

He smiled slightly, ignoring the weird look Salazar gave him as a result. No matter what she was up to, and knowing Liz she had to be up to something, the woman he loved would be out there fighting. And Kim would be right there with her, doing whatever she could do to help. He had earned the love and loyalty of some very amazing women, and he would hold on to it even if he couldn't hold on to them. Even Salazar could understand that. 

_-And you're just what I've been waiting for_

_So come and take me in_

_Grab a hold and take control and make me whole my friend-_

The video screen in the teleconference room had a map of greater Los Angeles as they tracked the helicopter's estimated path with updated information from the military air commander. Adam and all the tech support guys were still busy working on the emergency comm frequency. As he passed by, Adam told Michelle, Liz and David, "We're about halfway through. If we're lucky, maybe in the next ten minutes." Liz nodded. "Keep up the good work."

"What do you want to do?" Michelle asked her. "It's your call."

"You're right," Liz said. "It is." She reached behind her, spun the conference table phone around, and dialed. "Chase, it's Liz. What have you got for me?"

"I'm gonna case the city," Chase told her. "I don't care what they say, I don't think he's going to Mexico."

"Yeah, I had that feeling too." Cradling the phone, she allowed herself a small smile. "Call me if you hear anything, and if you do, be prepared to have some company."

"Is there any time you won't consider going out on a limb?"

"Probably not. Good luck, Chase." Liz hung up the phone and turned her attention back to the video screen, watching the red and gold dots float aimlessly. Everything reduced to little graphics on a map of numbers. She knew the truth, knew about the people behind those dots. And knew as she was sitting there that nothing was decided yet. After all, what was it Jack had told her? Evil always lives, but love always prevails. This time, love was on their side.

_-And if you need my everything_

_You can take it all and more_

_Just help me get back where we were before-_


End file.
